Monthly Archives: May 2016

This is indeed a very meaningful award. Gwanju has a big significance in Korean history. Gwangju Uprising,@ May 18 Democratic Uprising @ Gwangju Democratization Movement, refers to a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju, South Korea [1] from May 18 to 27, 1980. Estimates suggest up to 606 people may have died. During this period, Gwangju citizens took up arms (by robbing local armories and police stations) when local Jeonnam University [2] students – who were demonstrating against the Chun Doo-hwan government – were fired upon, killed, and beaten in an unprecedented attack by government troops. Our struggle is far from over!

With these information, we did our own analysis on publicly available data and put them on maps. After that, we did our own analysis to find out if that is indeed the case that BN will win more seats because of the re-delineation.

The Red lines show the boundaries of the state constituencies before the re-delineation exercise where as the Black lines show the boundaries of the state constituencies after the re-delineation exercise.

Observation 1

It seems like there is an attempt to split the PR supporting area in Bekenu to smaller areas.

Figure 2 – Enlargement of the Bekenu state constituency to emphasize the change in boundaries from the re-delineation exercise

If we calculate the BN/PR ratio for these voting districts, they area breaking the already weak PR supporting area (0.81 BN/PR ratio).

Figure 3 – BN/PR Voting Ratio for the area of Bekenu

Observation 2

In Samalaju (new state constituency) the new boundaries showed that the BN supporting area has been increased – an attempt to convert this area to BN majority area? This area was a Chinese majority area before the re-delineation (showed in the pie chart in Figure 1 above).

Figure 4 – Enlargement of the Samalaju state constituency to emphasize the change in boundaries from the re-delineation exercise

Figure 5 – BN/PR Voting Ratio for the area of Samalaju

From Figure 5 above, the PR supporting area in Samalaju was already having a weak / border-line voters’ support (0.9 BN/PR Voting Ratio). With the new boundaries, it was obvious that PR weight of influence in this area will be further weakened.

Observation 3

In Murum (new state constituency), the new boundaries showed that the BN supporting area has been increased – an attempt to convert this area to BN majority area? This area is an Orang Ulu majority area with 7648 registered voters.

Figure 6 – Enlargement of the Murum state constituencyto emphasize the change in boundaries from the re-delineation exercise

Figure 7 – BN/PR Voting Ratio for the area of Murum (the new state constituency will reflect a stronger BN support constituency after the construct)

Observation 4

In Mulu (new state constituency), the new boundaries brought in highly BN supporting area into this new state constituency (1 – in the map below). This area is an Orang Ulu majority area with 8048 registered voters. The Telang Usan Area sees a split of a high PR supporting area to two (2 – in the map below).

Figure 8 – Enlargement of the Mulu and Telang Usan state constituencies to emphasize the change in boundaries from the re-delineation exercise

Figure 9 – BN/PR Voting Ratio for the area of Mulu / Telang Usan (the state constituencies will result in stronger BN support constituencies after the re-delineation process)

Summary

We have listed only a few of the observations from the 2015 re-delineation of the Sarawak State voting boundaries. Thus, this proved that the claim by MERAP that there is indeed a strong tendency of creating more advantages to the current ruling government to win the next State Election with a bigger majority, with the latest sentiments of the 1MDB scandals and strong discontent of the Rakyat with our current Prime Minister and other power abuse issues, we might still see more areas moving towards supporting the opposition parties. Nevertheless, we still feel that it is still a long way for Sarawak to give up BN ruling in the coming State Election.